Marine Le Pen’s legal headaches

PARIS — French far-right leader Marine Le Pen is riding high in opinion polls, but her party faces a growing number of legal probes that could deplete resources and prove a major distraction as she seeks to win the presidency next year.

Le Figaro and investigative news site Mediapart reported late Tuesday, citing legal sources, that magistrates had opened a new preliminary inquiry into suspicions of campaign financing fraud linked to people and entities close to the Le Pen's National Front.

The new probe, which was launched in October and targets firms and a micro-party linked to the National Front, brings to four the number of serious legal cases facing the party simultaneously. All have to do with suspicions of financial wrongdoing.

Le Pen, who is personally concerned in two of the cases (one of which is a procedure in the European Parliament), argues that they are proof of politically motivated persecution against her party. "Investigations, inquiries, raids: The socialist power has no shortage of imagination when it comes to its political opposition," she said after one of the cases was opened in 2014.

So far the legal probes — none of which have yet brought a settlement or a conviction — have done little to dent Le Pen's popularity. Dozens of opinion polls in the past two years have indicated that the National Front leader, riding a wave of anti-establishment anger, will make it through to the presidential election run-off next year.

But legal troubles constitute a risk for a party strapped for cash and struggling to underwrite Le Pen's campaign, which is still €8 million short of its targeted budget. In addition to untold legal bills, the Front faces calls to reimburse more than €300,000 to the European Parliament.

Here is a roundup of Front's main legal cases:

1. Red flag over suspicious transactions between National Front-linked entities

On October 26, the Paris prosecutors' office opened a preliminary inquiry into suspicions of various counts of fraud by Jeanne, a micro-party linked to the National Front, between 2014 and 2016. Jeanne's treasurer Axel Loustau, now in charge of a finance unit in Le Pen's campaign structure; its former treasurer, Olivier Duguet; and Frédéric Chatillon, a controversial far-right figure and head of a PR agency linked to the National Front, Riwal, have all been mentioned as persons of interest in the probe, according to Mediapart.

Magistrates were tipped off earlier this year after Tracfin, the finance ministry's anti-money laundering division, flagged multiple transactions of several million euros both debiting and crediting the accounts of Jeanne, Riwal and peripheral firms. Judicial sources did not specify the nature of suspected wrongdoing behind these transactions. Loustau and Chatillon both told Mediapart that they denied any wrongdoing. Marine Le Pen declined to comment.

A preliminary inquiry may or may not lead to a formal investigation if magistrates gather enough evidence.

In October, magistrates ordered the National Front and two of its cadres, treasurer Wallerand de Saint-Just and vice president Jean-François Jalkh, to face trial as part of an investigation into alleged fraud linked to the party's 2012 legislative election campaign.

Saint-Just and Jalkh face charges for misuse of public funds and fraud, respectively. They are accused of having facilitated a fraudulent system by which candidates were forced to buy campaign "kits" costing more than €16,000 from firms linked to the National Front. Magistrates suspect the kits were deliberately overpriced in order to inflate the amount of money the party could reclaim from the state after the election, as part of a normal reimbursement procedure for any party that wins more than five percent of the vote in a national election.

Saint-Just and Jalkh deny any wrongdoing in the case which they have a denounced as "judicial bullying." Marine Le Pen was heard as a witness in 2014 but never placed under formal investigation. The trial has not yet started.

3. European Parliament seeks reimbursement of funds over 'misuse' of assistants

In late October, Marine Le Pen's lawyer told POLITICO that the European Parliament was seeking to recover €339,000 from the National Front chief. Le Pen and several other MEPs have faced questioning over suspicions that their parliamentary assistants were actually carrying out work for the party in France, in defiance of parliament rules.

Several other MEPs, including Marine Le Pen's father Jean-Marie, three others in the National Front and UKIP leader Nigel Farage, have also faced requests to reimburse money to parliament. Le Pen's lawyer said she would appeal the reimbursement order, and that he expected parliament to move to recover funds by docking her pay and expenses, as it did in the case of her father.

4. Le Pen and father suspected of underreporting financial assets

In January, a prosecutor specialized in financial crimes opened a preliminary investigation into allegations that Marine and Jean-Marie Le Pen deliberately under-reported the value of their financial assets to a government watchdog.

According to a 2015 statement from the High Authority for Transparency in Public Life (HATPV), the Le Pens were suspected of making "serious omissions" in a 2014 declaration of the value of their assets, notably concerning a mansion near Paris in which both own stakes. Le Pen and her father have both said, via representatives, that they had issued the same estimates of their assets to the HAPTV as they had previously done to tax authorities, which had accepted them. They both deny any wrongdoing.

If the investigation concludes in a trial and a conviction, the penalty for under-reporting financial assets can include a three-year prison sentence, a €45,000 fine and 10 years of being barred from running for office.